


Under My Skin

by BeatriceEagle



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Farscape, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Multi-Fandom, Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019), Star Trek
Genre: Ableism, Body Horror, Embedded Video, Fanvids, Gen, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Permanent Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:42:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 0
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27547021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeatriceEagle/pseuds/BeatriceEagle
Summary: My body is a foreign object.A fanvid to "Now or Never Now," by Metric.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	Under My Skin

**Author's Note:**

> This vid premiered at the Bitchin' Party Virtual Vid Dance Party 2020.
> 
> Warnings for graphic violence, blood, disfigurement/body trauma, guns/gunfire, death, medical trauma, minor ableism.

**Author's Note:**

> For six months last year, I couldn't vid.
> 
> In late September of 2019, I took a controlled fall while doing jujutsu, and hit the back of my head on the mat. I went to the hospital, where they told me I had a mild concussion. Within two months, the concussion had cleared up. The head pain had not.
> 
> The best guess—after numerous doctors and physical therapists and specialists—is that I have an underlying ligament laxity, and that the head trauma weakened the ligaments in my neck, setting off myofascial pain in my head. It responds poorly to physical therapy, to most medications, to most kinds of massage.
> 
> These days, thanks in part to a new medication, and in part to time and rest, the pain is largely under control. (Most of the time—I'm just coming off a week and a half of a flare-up, for god only knows what reason.) But it's managed only by massive limitations in my life. I can't drive for more than about half an hour. I can't go for a run, or do almost any kind of exercise that involves my upper body. I can't wear anything constricting on my head, including my glasses.
> 
> I was, in some ways, prepared for the exhaustion of chronic pain. I didn't _really_ understand it until I was in it, but I knew that it existed. What I wasn't prepared for was the very real trauma of a debilitating injury, even when the circumstances of the injury weren't, in and of themselves, particularly traumatic. I wasn't prepared for the ways that it would reshape me, for all of the old, unconnected traumas it would bring to the surface, for how it would alienate me from my body. I wasn't prepared for the cascading failures in my body, the way that one thing going wrong leads to another, leads to another. I wasn't prepared for how _isolating_ it all was. I wasn't prepared for the grief.
> 
> Realistic fiction, especially television, doesn't explore permanent traumatic injury very often, for, I think, obvious reasons. But sci-fi and fantasy do. The characters in this vid do not all have _good_ stories. Some of them are treated extremely poorly, for reasons both related and unrelated to their injuries. But taken in the aggregate, I recognize them. I understand them. Taken together, they tell a story that I know.
> 
> Finally, while I have you here, I would like to say, as loudly and plainly as I possibly can: Fuck Max Evans.


End file.
